Patchwork pieces: Quilt show features traditional patterns and modern techniques

Saturday

Oct 5, 2013 at 12:01 AMOct 5, 2013 at 4:15 PM

Leah Day could sew, knit, crochet and make jewelry, but the one craft she desperately wanted to learn stumped her for many years.

Jackie Bridges

Leah Day could sew, knit, crochet and make jewelry, but the one craft she desperately wanted to learn stumped her for many years.

“I’m not exaggerating when I say I’ve always wanted to quilt,” the 29-year-old Day said on her website, www.leahday.com. “One of my happiest memories is waking up on a chilly fall morning and finding my dad had wrapped me in a patchwork quilt. There’s a delicious weight and softness to older, worn quilts that just feels amazing to sleep under. I can remember puzzling over the patchwork pieces of a ‘Lone Star’ and wondering how all those shapes could fit together so perfectly.”

Day didn’t master quilting until many years later when she joined the Asheville Quilt Guild and took a couple of workshops. She realized that she couldn’t learn quilting by reading a book. She needed someone to show her what to do.

A PASSION TO LEARN AND TEACH

Her passion for learning became a passion to teach and preserve the heritage craft. Day, who moved to Cleveland County with her husband, Josh, in 2006, will present a lecture at the Foothills QuiltFest 2013. She is also a member of the Foothills Quilters Guild, the show’s sponsor.

“The Foothills Guild has an amazing amount of talent, and the show is always a joy to attend,” Day said. “I love that the show is always a mix of traditional and non-traditional quilts, and the skill of the quilters is always outstanding.”

Day’s quest to learn how to quilt led her to “Free Motion Quilting,” and in the last few years, she’s turned her hobby into a business.

“Free Motion Quilting is a technique that allows you to use your sewing machine in an entirely new way and basically draw with your needle,” she said. “I definitely didn’t invent this form of quilting, but I did dig deeply into all the things you can do with this technique when I set myself the challenge to create 365 new designs. I believe it’s most popular, because I shared my information - both photos and videos – online for free.”

USING THE INTERNET TO BUILD A BUSINESS

When Day challenged herself in 2009 to create a new design every day for a year, her website started to attract attention. Before starting her blog, “The Free Motion Quilting Project,” she was frustrated because she wanted to focus entirely on quilting, but didn’t know how to use her hobby to create an income.

“Since I was posting new designs daily in the beginning, the project grew very quickly,” Day said. “By September, I was getting emails from quilters asking about quilting, watching the videos, and sharing the project with their friends. The thing that blindsided me the most was requests for books and DVDs. I just never considered the idea that readers would want books or DVDs when the designs were all posted online for free.”

She started working on a DVD and a book and by Halloween had completed both.

“Going from being virtually nonexistent in July to having a business bringing in real money to our family was unexpected and quite overwhelming at times,” Day said.

TEACHING FROM HOME

She started getting requests to teach workshops, but she doesn’t like to travel and didn’t want to be away from her son, James, who was not quite 3 at the time. By producing more DVDs and books, she could avoid traveling. She also has an online quilt shop that offers kits, patterns, threads and other quilting tools and accessories.

“Leah has used the internet to become an internationally known teacher,” said Eleanor Morgan, a member of the Foothills Quilt Guild. “More than 5 million people have viewed her technique for free motion quilting via YouTube.”

Day encourages novice and advanced quilters to tap into their creativity.

“Creativity is a funny thing. If you give yourself permission to create and if you have a goal and you’re a goal-oriented person, you’ll be very surprised by what you can come up with,” she said. “I’ve actually created more than 700 free motion quilting designs (400 have been published so far) and creating them is as simple a drawing a sketch on paper. I play with shapes like hearts, spirals, triangles and flowers, and then I connect the shapes together, or branch them off one another, and depending on what type of lines I use I can change the texture and create a new effect.”

Want to go? Foothills QuiltFest 2013 is Friday and Saturday at the LeGrand Center, 1800 E. Marion St., Shelby, a new venue for the 10th bi-annual event. Admission is $5 each day. Show hours are 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Friday and 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday. For more information, go to www.foothillsquiltersguild.org. For more information about Leah Day, go to www.daystyledesigns.com/; www.leahday.com or freemotionquilting.blogspot.com/.